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Local housing options shrink for seniors

Merline Keenan, 79, works on a puzzle with Sarah Engels, operations manager with Senior Helpers, at Keenan's home in Northglenn. At least five assisted-living facilities planned for the metro area have been canceled or postponed.
(Joe Amon, The Denver Post
)

As economic problems squeeze elderly-housing corporations nationally, the impact on the local scene is becoming clearer: At least five assisted-living communities in the Denver area have been canceled or put on hold.

Problems range from companies' inability to access financing to senior citizens' inability — or unwillingness — to pay for new moves as they struggle with their own strained budgets.

"The main issue is that the finance market is dead — nonexistent," said Don MacKenzie, president of MacKenzie House, an elderly-housing firm that has postponed groundbreaking for a 100-unit Denver complex at Logan Street and Speer Boulevard while it pursues government housing grants.

Assisted-living industry giants Sunrise Senior Living and Brookdale Senior Living have dropped development plans across the country as they try to sort through debt problems.

The two companies, operating at least 30 homes in Colorado between them, have declined to discuss with media outlets what projects they've abandoned in this region or how cost cutbacks could affect their existing communities.

The word in local government circles, however, is that building-plan applications are expiring, land deals are falling through and letters are arriving announcing holds on projects.

At least three housing projects appear dead — in Jefferson County, Littleton and Westminster.

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In Jefferson County near the foothills, Virginia-based Sunrise officially pulled the plug on one of the biggest facilities, a three-story, 90-unit building that would have employed up to 30 people, according to planner Jeanne Schaffer.

The company had planted trees at the site and was working with neighbors to sort out landscaping issues. But area residents noticed in recent months that no shovels were turning, prompting them to call the county to find out whether the 66,150- square-foot project was dead.

Farther north in Westminster, Baltimore-based Erickson Retirement Communities dropped plans to build a facility near Interstate 25 and 120th Street. Those company officials also declined to reveal details of the scuttled deal, other than to say in a written statement they will "discontinue further exploration in the Westminster area."

Spectrum Retirement Communities deep-sixed a plan to build a 76-unit community in Littleton near Broadway and High Line Canal in recent months, a city planner said. And Erickson put on hold its 83-unit Renaissance Gardens project at C-470 and U.S. 85 in Douglas County, according to those officials.

Jim Remley, a longtime marketing consultant for senior facilities, said some senior citizens are backing off their plans to move to these facilities.

"The standard in the industry up until this crisis has been to presell about 70 percent," he said.

Some companies are having a hard time securing those commitments, he said.

"It's the dynamics of the economy in both cases — just leveraged at different points," said Remley.

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